As my car radio only accepts MP3 files (and audio CDs of course), I was annoyed that Audible do not provide any files that a standard HIFI device can play (and MP3 is pretty much standard nowadays). Of course I started with burning the audible files to CDs, but honestly who wants to have tens of CDs laying around in the car?Therefore I tried to write a small program which takes the burned CDs and converts them to MP3 (or AAC or Flac) files, fully tagged and divided at the chapter points. Further it automatically removes the annoying "Presented by Audible" comments at the beginning and the end (it should work for english and german fileS). Please let me know what you think of it!

Here comes a full documentation of how to convert the audible files (no cracking or hacking involved!):

1. Burn your audible file to (real or virtual) audio CD(s) using ITunes. Best is to deactivate "Gap Between Songs" (set it to "none") - but I don't know whether it really has any impact in this case... Now the DRM is gone and we can work with the CDs.2. Extract the CDs to an "image" file (whole audio CD in one single file). ITunes will insert a new track roughly every 7 minutes, it doesn't look whether there is a pause at the track junction or not! Also ITunes will repeat roughly 20 seconds of audio when starting a further CD. So this division in tracks is not helpful, that is why we just extract the CDs to CD image files. Use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for enhanced security - or just any other Audio CD Grabber. Extract the images to uncompressed WAV files and name them xxxxx01.wav, xxxxx02.wav, etc. (xxxxx can be any name).3. Locate the according Audible file (either .aa or .aax) on your harddisk, e.g. right click the audiobook in ITunes and select "Show in Windows Explorer".4. Use my tool to create WAV files (untagged) or fully tagged AAC, MP3 or Flac files.

Now the documentation of my tool:

1. InstallationExtract the files to a directory of your choice, it comes with the Flac Encoder preinstalled. If you want to encode to MP3, you need to copy a current version of the LAME MP3 Encoder in that directory (LAME.EXE), and if you want to get a single(!) AAC file (including chapter marks), just drop the Nero AAC Encoder package in that directory (NeroAACEnc.exe and NeroAACTag.exe are necessary). The tool will detect which encoders are in the same directory and create such files - if you have three encoders installed, the tool will create all three encoding schemes! Only if no encoder is found, the tool will produce untagged and uncompressed WAV files.

2. UsageThe tool is a command line tool only, so open a dos box and change the current directory to the path where you installed the EXEs.Just starting the tool without any parameters will show you all possible options.If you start the program with only the audible file name (with extension .aa or .aax), it will just show you the title and chapters of the Audible audio book. These information are stored unencrypted in the Audible files, so no hacking of a DRM or whatever is needed - all information can be read in plain text using a hexeditor.In order to convert the files to the "selected" output formats, use this command line:AudibleChapters.exe <audible filename> <first WAV image> <target directory><audible filename> is the name (and full path) of the Audible file with an extensio nof .aa or .aax<first WAV image> is the name (and full path) of the first extracted WAV image (which must end with "01.wav"!)<target directory> is a full specified path, in which a subdirectory will be created (from the name of the audio book)If the audio book is an .aax file, everything is probably fine. If not, you can do something about it!I also found a book, which has real chapters (the speaker really tells "Chapter Five"), but the audible chapters where just somewhere inbetween! This is not nice, so I decided to implement also a function for automatically find possible chapter markers (the chapter marks from the Audible file will be ignored completely).There is a fully automated usage possible when just specifying -d on the command line. You can also specify a rough minimum and maximum length of a chapter in minutes (e.g. -d10:20 will create chapters which will be mostly between 10 and 20 minutes in length). The program will find the best matching positions, but of course can not be perfect without any user interaction. Therefore the -i option provides this user interactivity (used in conjunction with -d). After having searched the file, the tool will play a position within the file (the audio just after the "beep" will be in a new chapter). If the book has real chapters, which can be identified easily, you can decide whether you want to have a chapter mark at the "beep" position. Press "y" for yes and "n" for no. If you want to listen again to that piece of audio, press the "r" key. If you have enough chapters and want to start processing, press "q". Usually if there are no new chapter starts after 10-20 false propositions, there will be no further chapter start...Any problems with the tool should be shown on the command line, have a look for WARNING and ERROR messages...

I have prepared a new version (version 1.1) of the AudibleChapters tool. It basically still behaves exactly like described above, but has the following changes:

- Adding a pause (defaults to 2.8 seconds) after the last extracted track. This is because in case of multi-file audiobooks otherwise the last track of one file and the first track of the following file have no pause between (which can be distractive, as there should be a pause between chapter changes - and usually there should be a chapter change between two Audible files). The length of the added pause (in milliseconds, also length of 0 is possible) can be set via the new -p parameter (e.g. -p0 )- A warning message is now reworded, as it might have been misleading

It would be quite helpful, if there would be some feedback - does it work, where and how does it fail? There must be at least somebody who did some tests!

Cannot get anything but this message. NB: I have tried various combinations of paths for the 2nd and 3rd parameters, and tried both aax and aa files.

It should be the second parameter (as the error message tells so) which is bad. Please specifiy the full(!) path to the first wav file (try also using quotes). In the above example it is probably unsufficient to just give the filename without path (but it could work nevertheless). Also try using admin rights!?

Anyway, the given error message happens if the file can't be found - this test is done using "FindFirstFile", if the handle value is not "INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE", the file does exist (for further processing), otherwise the error message is thrown. If you have specified quotes (as above for the .aa file), then I am a bit out of wit... What OS do you use? Does anybody else experience the same behaviour? I use and test under Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (but of course it should also run under 32 bit, as it is a 32 bit app).

EDIT: I have tried with local path (without specifying path) and without any quotes, and it worked... So I have no clue why it doesn't work for you!

If the problem persists I could do a test version which will output several information about the files etc for debugging...

The problem with .aa and .aax files is not the demultiplexing (there are a lot of tools out there for just demuxing), but the encryption. It would be necessary to be broken, and at least where I live this would be illegal (while my way is perfectly legal). Of course the second compression hurts the audio, but as the encoding is done usually with a slightly higher bitrate and quality based, the loss is hopefully small. The speed would of course also be higher, but I usually convert a 6 hours audiobook within 1 hour (using VirtualCD)...

Neat little tool! Takes up lots of temporary space, but gets the job done. I just tried it on the first part of a 13 hour audio book using just iTunes and a CDRW.

Here's how I used it:

-Burn audible playlist to CD-Each time it ejects I put the CDRW into a different computer and import via iTunes with the "Join CD Tracks" option to get my single WAV file for each CD-Run the program with Nero encoder (would be nice to have encoding options, especially for LAME)

I haven't listened to it yet, but it seems to have found chapters although I got this warning:Searching for Audible textsWARNING: audio duration differs from chapter list, missing 24350 seconds!Found audible introduction speech, removing itFound audible ending speech, removing it

So I am skeptical that something may be missing here. When I play the audible files on my iPhone, I can see that some of the "chapters" are actually broken up into 2 parts, so when playing a chapter it will say "1 of 2" at the top, then "2 of 2" before going on to the next chapter, perhaps this has something to do with the missing seconds?

Mmmm... Never encountered such an audiobook before. But I only have some few audiobooks for testing. Please check the chapter marks with the file in Itunes, are at the given position really a chapter point?Which audio book did have the problems? Did you also tried a different audio book?By the way, usually such large audiobooks are divided into around 6 hour .aa or .aax files, how is it on that audible file? What is the total running time of each of the files?The missing seconds are around 6 hours 45 minutes, I guess this is the total length of the file. It is funny that it found the beginning and ending speech at all... Perhaps that message was wrong (though it shouldn't).If you want specific compression options, you should encode to flac and from there (e.g. using Foobar2000) into any other compression format.

I already played with some false filenames and the app responded with the expected error codes (like "file not found").The "Book_01.wav" filesize is 2.042.835 Bytes and is playable by iTunes. Also the "Book.aa" can be played by iTunes.When using only the "Book.aa" as single parameter the app lists correctly 15 chapters as well as author and book title.I'm working on a Windows XP Professional, Version 2002, SP 3.I just downloaded the acutal versions of neroAacTag.exe and neroAacEnc.exe which reside in the same directory as AudibleChapters.exe.My goal is to produce an apple like audiobook with chapters included.

Hi AAAthanks for your PM. Downloaded now the aax versions of some Audible files and tested your programme v1.3: works like a charme . Thank you for that! The aax Quality is much better than with the aa files. Removal of the announcements and other filler data is a real kick!Klaus

Yeah, no chance to burn them in Linux. I hadn't thought of wine when I asked - but it works like a charm as I found out a few days later.

I've created a small script to convert all my audiobooks (various formats: aax, mp3, m4a) into standard-compliant mp4/m4b. I wasn't aware in the beginning that aax are actually normal mp4 containers with a protected audiotracks on which mp4chaps & mp4art works just fine. But without your tool to detect the announcements and the overlapping of audio (when burning to multiple disks), I'd be screwed.

If you are interested, I'll gladly share this small bash script.

Thanks again for your invaluable tool! I'll try the 1.3 version as soon as possible.

just to tell you that I worked on approx 40 audiobooks with multiple parts meanwhile. The new version 1.3 did not show any flats or problems ( I controlled some arbitrary chapters per audiobook and found no deviation). Filler data are cut out completely. Win 7 Professional 64 with Noteburner used here. I take the wav files as they come out of Noteburner and rename them to xx_wav01 etc. With a small MSDOS batch script I can work with a multiple-part audiobook in one batch at a time. This converts a four part audiobook in 45 min plus cosmetics.

Mmmm... Never encountered such an audiobook before. But I only have some few audiobooks for testing. Please check the chapter marks with the file in Itunes, are at the given position really a chapter point?Which audio book did have the problems? Did you also tried a different audio book?By the way, usually such large audiobooks are divided into around 6 hour .aa or .aax files, how is it on that audible file? What is the total running time of each of the files?The missing seconds are around 6 hours 45 minutes, I guess this is the total length of the file. It is funny that it found the beginning and ending speech at all... Perhaps that message was wrong (though it shouldn't).If you want specific compression options, you should encode to flac and from there (e.g. using Foobar2000) into any other compression format.

Best regards,

Anonymous Audible Addict

The book mentioned above was indeed two ~6hr aax files, it's called "Loving Frank".

Also, just tried another one and got a similar issue, also interactive mode doesn't appear to do anything:

This is with Adam Carolla's book In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. I haven't listened to this one yet, but at first glance the chapters seem to be ok although the total time of the individual WAV chapters is 6:45:12 and the single .aax file is 6:44:24, so even after removing intro and ending, the files seem to be longer, most likely because the overlapping wasn't able to find it even though it does indeed overlap if I listen to the 6 CD's I made.

I think I see the problem, Interactive mode was meant to help detect chapters (and I wasn't using the -d option, only -i). I was hoping it could be used to detect the overlap which the program doesn't seem to be doing on this book for some reason even though the overlaps are there in the resulting file (20 seconds is repeated at each CD change).

I think I see the problem, Interactive mode was meant to help detect chapters (and I wasn't using the -d option, only -i). I was hoping it could be used to detect the overlap which the program doesn't seem to be doing on this book for some reason even though the overlaps are there in the resulting file (20 seconds is repeated at each CD change).

pacohaas

Did you try to run audiblechapters.exe with just the aax file name as parameter? Did it recognize the audible chapters properly? It should report this on the screen. Your screen shot says 6 chapters - no more. I once had an error message saying 12 seconds missing: this was due to a recording problem with iTunes. I could not repeat this.

The programme says "missing 24346 seconds!" - that is too much. If the chapter recognition by audiblechapters works fine you MUST have a recording problem. Try to check the beginnings and endings of your individual wav files. Also - the individual wav files should not be larger than 2GB!

No, the screenshot says there are 6 files. I did not post the chapter information. It does find 57 chapters in these 6 files (all ~74 minutes as would be expected from a CD-R). What I am concerned with is that it doesn't find the 20 seconds of overlap that is clearly there when I listen to the files.

I tried something different this time using Audacity to record the entire 6h45m audio file and then split it up into 6 files. First I tried this by generating 6 files that had 20 seconds of overlap, but I was getting the same error about not matching the 2 wave files, so I figured I'd try it again by generating files that did not overlap, the first 5 are 1h10m, the last is 54m22s. This seems to have worked. I still had to remove the intro and outro Audible tags ("This is Audible" and "Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program"), but other than that looks good, now time to convert it back to AAC...

Here's an error I'm getting on another file, what can I do about this:

CODE

Writing chapter 1...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Writing chapter 2...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Writing chapter 3...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Writing chapter 4...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Writing chapter 5...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Writing chapter 6...ERROR: Could not create output file! Is the path valid and is created?Done!

It does create the folder appropriately so I'm not sure the problem:C:\Users\aaaa\Desktop\The Decision Tree Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era

It does create the folder appropriately so I'm not sure the problem:C:\Users\aaaa\Desktop\The Decision Tree Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era

FYI, I found the problem with this one, it has an illegal windows filename character in the name ":"The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine (Unabridged) Part 1

I just changed the trackname in iTunes and now it works although it still can't detect overlapping audio in files that I generated purposefully with 20 seconds of overlap from a single 5hr wave. So I just split that WAVE in half and did the same as with the last book "ignore since not overlapping". Again it appears as though the "This is Audible" intro and "Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program" were not deleted, but I can do that manually.

However, the actual file is 06:09:34 in length, Chapter 2 starts at 23:40, Chapter 3 starts at 45:43, and so on. It also gives me the "missing 22171 seconds" message if I try to create the output files, which makes sense, as that's basically half the file.